L.A. Noire: Your Questions Answered

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Can you put the wrong person in jail? You need to know.

By Hilary Goldstein

Rockstar's venture into 1940s Los Angeles is set to arrive on a PS3 or Xbox 360 near year this spring. To this point, Rockstar has been relatively quiet about the hotly anticipated crime drama. IGN readers were asked to submit questions for Rockstar and a lucky handful were chosen.

Rockstar's VP of Product Development, Jeronimo Barrera and Head of Team Bondi, Brendan McNamara have the answers.

Branket asks... I myself am a huge fan of film, and specifically film-noir. I think it's fantastic that someone is finally striving to do the genre video-game justice. Will we see any overt nods or references to classic noir films, or just crime films in general?

Brendan McNamara: There are countless nods to film noir if you're a true fan, and the game was inspired by a massive range of film and literature spreading across eras. We were inspired by everything from the Naked City, which invented the police procedural, through to more obscure movies like Detour and more modern Noir like Chinatown or L.A. Confidential. We will be posting a full list of recommended viewing to the Rockstar Newswire over the coming months.

Brendan McNamara: I have two favorite living American writers: James Elroy for his unbelievable plotting and for reinventing modern dialogue and James Lee Burke for his incredible prose. As a teenager growing up I read a lot of Chandler, Hammett and Joseph Cain. L.A. Noire attempts to pay homage to all of these great influences and bring a contemporary lens to this incredibly rich era.

Link_Is_My_Homie asks... I've heard you have multiple ways of uncovering secrets in the game. Will more skilled detectives be rewarded for their ability to uncover clues quickly?

Jeronimo Barrera: The goal of the game is to be the best detective you can possibly be, so each case eventually ends with you solving the case correctly and rising through the ranks of the LAPD. How you get there is determined by the choices you make through the case, leading you down separate paths on your way to each break in the case. Your effectiveness at solving cases will be determined by how quickly you can use what you find to solve a case. Scouring a crime scene for clues is just one part of solving a case quickly.

Discovering different clues may open up different leads to new locations or suspects, which in turn open up new options for a player to decide how to go about solving a case. But that's only part of the challenge: during interrogations, players must correctly analyze a suspect in order to get the most information from them, and know which evidence to present and when to present it to get the answers they need.

Scodiac666 asks... At first, were any of the actors intimidated by the depth analysis room? On the other the hand, were they enthused after they saw what the technology was capable of?

Brendan McNamara: I think all of the actors see video games as another exciting opportunity for them, and something that compliments their film and television careers. We were introducing many of the actors to motion capture for the first time. MotionScan was even more radical for them because it was the first time it was being used and we were learning how to use it as well. There was definitely some trepidation at first. Erika Heynatz, who plays the jazz singer Elsa Lichtman, described the process as "other-worldy."

It's also a challenge to come from classic motion capture, where there's lots of motion and noise into a forbidding white room where all the acting is taking place from the neck up. Everyone's reaction to how they have come out in the game has been total amazement.

Quicksand_buddy asks... How many hours of dialogue were recorded for L. A. Noire? Also, is there enough variety in dialogue alone to merit multiple playthroughs?

Brendan McNamara: We captured over 50 hours worth of dialogue in total, all using MotionScan -- it's equivalent to about two full seasons of a TV show. Each case has its own twists and turns depending on the choices you make, leading you down different paths on your way to cracking the case, giving you plenty of reasons to jump back in and replay the game.

KYGkillingyouguy asks... Will this technology became standard for future Rockstar games?

Jeronimo Barrera: We would love to see it implemented as widely as possible, whether it is appropriate will depend on the project. MotionScan is more than just the end result; it's an entire approach to game development, so it will not work for every game. It's a huge part of L.A. Noire because it's tied to the core mechanics of analyzing a suspect's behavior during interrogations and reading their emotional cues. It's a pioneering form of technology that breaks new ground for gameplay.

Looks dead to me.

Ridabelaco asks...Can you mess up an investigation like send to jail the wrong guy? And how will that affect the main character or the history of the game?

Brendan McNamara: There is an overarching plot that governs the story of the game, but how you get there is up to you. There are definitely situations in the game where you can arrest the wrong suspect. It's a player choice and adds an interesting challenge, especially if the evidence is compelling for both suspects.

AndrewW91 asks... Could you give us a sense of how open the world is? And what kind of activities we can take part in while not on a mission (if any)?

Jeronimo Barrera: The world is completely open for you to travel through at all times, but the focus of the game is not the same as a Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption. This time, the city is a backdrop for the incredibly accurate real-world locations and crime scenes that Cole Phelps explores on his way to solving each case. The game has been crafted to seamlessly blend classic cops-and-robbers style action with dynamic interrogations and searching for suspects in a way that one doesn't distract from the other.

There are ambient events within the game world that you will hear more about in the weeks ahead, like unassigned cases or robberies in progress that you can take on outside of the main story, but the focus is on Cole's progression through the ranks of the LAPD and the events that unfold as a result.

It's a very intense game because we ask you to listen very carefully to what has been said and to remember names, places and clues, as well as decide whether you can believe what someone is saying. It's going to be a very new experience for our audience but one we think they are very ready for.